Eighteen months after its grid computing Database 10g product took to the streets with a fervor,
Oracle is pounding the pavement again with the second release of the
software.

Database 10g Release 2 (R2) includes increased XML support, tighter security
and more automation, perks that Oracle officials said should give the
product a leg up over competing database software from IBM and Microsoft.

Oracle released the first Oracle Database 10g in 2004 amid great fanfare. The
Redwood Shores, Calif., company hyped its revised database software
as unique compared to software from its competitors.

Oracle touts its product as ideal for handling grid computing. This is
because the software offers clustering, workload management and a good deal
of automation to take manual administrative tasks such as performance
tuning, disk and memory management, out of human hands.

R2 extends those self-managing capabilities and then some, according to Mark
Townsend and Willie Hardie, senior directors in Oracle's database unit.

The executives said customers have asked for improvements because databases
are exponentially growing with each glut of information that squeezes through
corporate networks. Much of this data must be saved for specific lengths of
time in order to comply with federal regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley.

Security is a major bugbear for corporations today. Headlines blare news of banks losing data
tapes or facing fraudulent breaches.

While Oracle has encrypted data at the
column level since release 8i, Hardie said Database 10g R2 has technology
for transparently encrypting data and personal information without the need
for developers to rewrite applications.

This is key because much of the data in databases is rendered in clear text.

"In 8i, 9i, and 10G R1, you could use an API to encrypt or decrypt your data
as you updated it," Hardie explained. "It'd work very well if you were
building a new app."

"But if you had a legacy app or packaged app, it's hard to retrofit
encryption into those environments. In R2, you can go in and physically
change the column definition in the database, making it transparent to apps
that use it."

Forrester Research analyst Noel Yuhanna said the security features put
Oracle head of IBM and Microsoft for now, noting that SQL Server 2005 will
have strong encryption when the Redmond giant produces the gold code to its
software.

"Some compliance requirements require encryption of data [California Senate
Bill 1386, for example] and until now we never had a really comprehensive
addressed encryption from database vendors," Yuhanna said. "I think it's
going to be very popular for customers in the financial sector and the
banking sector that really want to protect the data."

The analyst said the security upgrade could lure new customers. Oracle is
banking on that proposition.

While security is a major perk, Oracle has boosted XML support in its
database again, after supporting XML natively in R1. With R2, the company is
the first major database maker to add support for the W3C's XML Query
standard for accessing XML data, said Townsend.

Oracle has also increased support for rival Microsoft's Windows software via
stored procedures implemented in the Common Runtime Language (CLR) and
enhanced integration with Visual Studio.

The new release will also feature an open API for Oracle's clusterware,
Cluster Ready Services. Townsend said that 10g R1 consolidated data onto
clustered Linux servers with the company's own clusterware system. With R2,
users can cluster Apache Web servers.

This should appeal to customers who looking for more open source options.
And new load balancing tolls in Oracle's Real Application Clusters triggers
speedy server utilization patterns across a cluster.

R2 will also feature new storage options. These include backup-to-tape;
spiced up automated failover tools to come back online quickly after a
disaster; more automated storage management options; and storage
virtualization.